What I learned by blogging every day

In a hasty bid to come up with a New Years Resolution on 31st December I decided, somewhat whimsically, to blog everyday in 2014. 71 days in (I know, can you believe it?) and so far so good. Mostly.

I thought I’d share with you what I’ve learnt from embracing daily blogging and what I need to work on!

1. Frequency

The reason I started this challenge is because I was reading the book, Manage Your Day-to-Day, in which there is a fantastic article about doing your ‘thing’, be it baking or blogging, every day. There are many reasons for this such as, it…

• breeds ideas and creativity;
• preventing writers block and things becoming a big deal; and
• prevents procrastination

2. The creativity muscle

People like Stephen King write every day. Come rain or shine, in sickness and in health. They embrace frequency (and Stephen King also goes one step further by doing it in exactly the same way each day – same time, same cup of tea, same music – tricking his brain into work mode). I have to say, it’s working – there are days I can’t be bothered but when I sit down to blog, the idea does come fairly quickly and I enjoy it.

3. Regular themes

To make it slightly easier on myself, I have regular themes and encourage guest contributions. I publish 2 birth stories a week as part of The Giving Birth Series. This requires work in both editing and writing intro and conclusion text, but takes the creative pressure off a little.

I’ve also started a Linky Party called Mums’ List, which is a way of collecting my thoughts at the end of the week and write about things that might not have room in other posts. Plus, it’s fun to share ideas and see what other bloggers are working on and reading about!

4. I don’t know what’s going to be successful

I’ve no idea what is going to work. I’ve realised from researching blogging and social media that I don’t seem to use things like other people. For example, I don’t use Pinterest for shopping purposes and yet it has a fantastic conversion rate for retailers. Equally, I can’t predict what will be a popular blog post. There have been popular posts that I wouldn’t have written at all unless I was at a loss for what to write about that day!

5. Traffic

In January 2014 my traffic increased by 60% compared to December 2013 and unique visitors increased by 50%. Traffic from Facebook increased by 160%! The only change? I blogged 12 times in December 2012 and 31 times in January 2014, so I guess I had more reasons to direct traffic from Facebook to my blog.

6. Other things slip

House work, being social online, reading time…all these things are harder to achieve when I’m blogging everyday. I’ve learnt that I’m terrible at scheduling and planning ahead. But, while I kind of enjoy that “in the moment” style of blogging…it also stresses me out! For a while I was getting up at 6am to write for an hour, the idea being that you get your most important work done first. This worked nicely but it is SO HARD TO GET OUT OF A WARM BED!

So while I have definitely been more productive in 2014 (71 blog posts are a testament to that!), I need to work on a better balance between writing (and scheduling!), research and taking part in other blog communities. Oh, and house work!

(You can read my full article about Daily Blogging and why I’m doing it on my site)

Do you blog everyday? What have you learnt about the experience? And how do you find the time?!

About Hannah Parker

Hannah is an ex-city girl turned wife, mum and step-mum living in a North East seaside town with a bad reputation. Hannah has been blogging for 2 years at Mums’ Days, where she documents her triumphs and tragedies of daily life trying to be a good mum. She has recently started a Directory of Giving Birth with over 30 stories all donated by members of the Mums’ Days community on Facebook. She will be carrying the baton in the TeamHonk relay from Newcastle to Alnwick in March!

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